Matt Vaughan
King of Moody Rants
Bronze Level
***PRO-TIP***
There are cliffs.
**cue epic intro music**
There are cliffs.
**cue epic intro music**
What am I saying? Here you go:
Hey! My name's Matt Vaughan! What's yours?! Before I go any further, if you'd like some semblance of a clue to how we got here, but not the whole picture, feel free to check out my previous progress thread where I went over my live poker journey.
With that out of the way... WHY in the hell am I starting a new thread instead of necroing my old one like a BAWS????
First of all, that thread is DEAD. And I don't mess with dead stuff. My mom taught me that.
Second, if I necro that thread, I'll keep getting people looking at the literal 5.5-year-old OP going "good luck as you start this live poker journey!!" trying desperately to hit their 30-post requirement, or whatever it is nowadays to get into the freeroll club.
Third... I'm a self-interested SOB and I want a new thread, alright?? So just... okay?!
Lastly, things are actually pretty different for me since I started that thread AND since I let it crash and burn. Here's how:
BC: Before (thread) Crash
- I was first in college and then worked a standard 9-5 in healthcare IT.
- I spent all my free time playing poker.
- I had no clue what I was doing in the game.
AD: After (thread) Death
- I work for a poker training site, play poker, and vlog about it. Sometimes I stream.
- I spend my free time doing almost anything but poker. But also sometimes poker.
- ... Some things never change.
The Dirty Details
I currently play a weird mixture of stuff. About 12 of the last 18 months, I spent grinding solely online MTT's primarily on Ignition. Then I binked their 100k GTD and found out you can't play on the site if you live in Maryland (where I live). I got paid out, but bye bye Ignition. I moved most of my volume to BetOnline, then ACR, with reasonable success, but nothing insane.
I played this past year's 2019 WSOP, and pretty much bricked out. It was my first time having close to all of myself. Figures it's basically my first losing WSOP ever. Sucks to suck I guess.
Since returning home, I've dived fully back into online cash games - something I haven't dedicated myself to since maybe 2012 (check some of my old threads, they are hilarious in a very cringe-worthy sort of way) - on a site called PKC. It's a US-facing site that plays with a primarily Chinese player pool, making it, imo, one of the softest options out there for US players. Oh and we let in Canadians, too. God knows why.
But the important bit is this: The site is endorsed by Bart Hanson, owner/founder of Crush Live Poker, and a super reputable guy in the industry. He personally knows the head of security and the general manager of PKC, which makes this probably the safest US-facing site out there by itself, and on top of that their focus is basically all game integrity. No bots, no collusion, etc. It ain't Pokerstars... but it's home for me now.
It's all cash games on there, so that's what I've been grinding, playing primarily 5/10/20 ¥ with a ¥ ante. (That's Chinese yuan btw, which is roughly a 7 to 1 conversion to USD.) That game with antes effectively plays with a $3 mandatory straddle, but plays closer to a shallow $3/$6 NL game because of the antes.
I shotted 10/20/40 ¥, it went pretty badly, but was also a pretty horrific run of variance on top of some personal stuff going on in my life that compounded into play bad. No excuses. I should have taken more days off. I didn't. It's water under the bridge. But I really wish some of those sessions would have walked the damn plan-- you know what, I KNOW I'm overdoing the nautical shit, okay? Don't get in a damn uproar about it.
So anyway, I'm back down to 5/10/20¥ with my tail between my legs. (I didn't have a good nautical version of that... but now that I think of it "with my mast in shambles" mighta been good. Oh well). The goal is to basically get something like 60-100k¥ profit before I shot 10/20/40¥ again since I didn't feel comfortably rolled last time.
The plan for this thread is to post hand histories, bitch and moan about how bad I'm running, and generally get lots of you playing on PKC with me.
So to kick it off, here are a couple fun hands I've played so far in my next couple of posts.
Cliffs:
I played this past year's 2019 WSOP, and pretty much bricked out. It was my first time having close to all of myself. Figures it's basically my first losing WSOP ever. Sucks to suck I guess.
Since returning home, I've dived fully back into online cash games - something I haven't dedicated myself to since maybe 2012 (check some of my old threads, they are hilarious in a very cringe-worthy sort of way) - on a site called PKC. It's a US-facing site that plays with a primarily Chinese player pool, making it, imo, one of the softest options out there for US players. Oh and we let in Canadians, too. God knows why.
But the important bit is this: The site is endorsed by Bart Hanson, owner/founder of Crush Live Poker, and a super reputable guy in the industry. He personally knows the head of security and the general manager of PKC, which makes this probably the safest US-facing site out there by itself, and on top of that their focus is basically all game integrity. No bots, no collusion, etc. It ain't Pokerstars... but it's home for me now.
It's all cash games on there, so that's what I've been grinding, playing primarily 5/10/20 ¥ with a ¥ ante. (That's Chinese yuan btw, which is roughly a 7 to 1 conversion to USD.) That game with antes effectively plays with a $3 mandatory straddle, but plays closer to a shallow $3/$6 NL game because of the antes.
I shotted 10/20/40 ¥, it went pretty badly, but was also a pretty horrific run of variance on top of some personal stuff going on in my life that compounded into play bad. No excuses. I should have taken more days off. I didn't. It's water under the bridge. But I really wish some of those sessions would have walked the damn plan-- you know what, I KNOW I'm overdoing the nautical shit, okay? Don't get in a damn uproar about it.
So anyway, I'm back down to 5/10/20¥ with my tail between my legs. (I didn't have a good nautical version of that... but now that I think of it "with my mast in shambles" mighta been good. Oh well). The goal is to basically get something like 60-100k¥ profit before I shot 10/20/40¥ again since I didn't feel comfortably rolled last time.
The plan for this thread is to post hand histories, bitch and moan about how bad I'm running, and generally get lots of you playing on PKC with me.
So to kick it off, here are a couple fun hands I've played so far in my next couple of posts.
Cliffs:
- My name's Matt Vaughan
- I've played poker a surprisingly long time
- I used to suck
- I only kind of suck now
- I might keep throwing nautical references in here for fun :captain:
- LFGGGGG
Last edited by a moderator:
